Twenty-year-old Cristina Lopez has her eye on the prize -- that being her first bout at the Golden Gloves on Friday. Chronicle photo by Kurt Rogers

Twenty-year-old Cristina Lopez has her eye on the prize -- that being her first bout at the Golden Gloves on Friday. Chronicle photo by Kurt Rogers

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Cristina Lopez, a twenty-year-old sophomore at San Francisco State, will compete in her first amateur fight Friday night at the Cow Palace. Chronicle photo by Kurt Rogers

Cristina Lopez, a twenty-year-old sophomore at San Francisco State, will compete in her first amateur fight Friday night at the Cow Palace. Chronicle photo by Kurt Rogers

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Cristina Lopez is getting ready to enter the world of boxing. Chronicle photo by Kurt Rogers

Cristina Lopez is getting ready to enter the world of boxing. Chronicle photo by Kurt Rogers

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All This Woman Wants Is a Ring / Boxer Lopez steps into one at Cow Palace

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This will be no quinceanero. At 20, Cristina Lopez is a bit too old for a coming-out party. Besides, she likes her activities more on the physical side.

This will be a debut nonetheless, a rite of passage into a unusual society Latinas have rarely entered -- the boxing crowd.

Lopez, a sophomore at San Francisco State, will compete in her first amateur fight Friday night as part of the 70th edition of the Golden Gloves, which opens its four-night run at the Cow Palace tomorrow.

She's the only woman among the 12 entrants from M&M, the Mission District gym run by tournament organizer Sonny Marson, who has been a trainer for 42 years.

Lopez, born in San Francisco to Salvadoran parents, is treading upon ground quite familiar to her Hispanic brethren, for whom boxing has long been a means to escape poverty, settle disputes or simply get a workout. The sight of a Latina climbing into a ring, though, still turns some heads.

This, after all, is not exactly ". . . the feminine ideal," Lopez interrupted cheerfully when the subject was brought up, adding, "Everybody's been very supportive. They're really proud. They're happy I'm doing something I really like and I feel I'm good at."

Just how good won't be known until she trades meaningful punches in the ring. Only one other woman trains regularly at Marson's gym, but she and Lopez haven't sparred because their schedules don't coincide, so Lopez gets her work in against men. They're invariably bigger (she's 5-foot-1, 125 pounds), and they provide moving targets more than actual competition, throwing soft punches in her general direction.

"She's pretty polished for a person who has no experience," Marson said. "She has the ability, but what will happen when she gets in the ring and faces another female? We don't know."

It might not matter, at least not as much as Lopez's willingness to try her hand at a sport that until recent years was closed to women.

"Few girls will attempt this," said her mother, Dina Lopez. "She's even had some run-ins with guys who have told her, 'Why try something like that? Why not something else, like modeling?' And she'd say, 'No, I want to do this.' "

Seeing her determination, the Lopez clan got squarely behind her, despite some concern over the sport's risks. In fact, the women in Lopez's household have long been boxing fans.

Dina recalls watching boxing on television with her family while growing up in the Salvadoran city of Santa Ana. Her own mother, Graciela, is among Cristina's most ardent supporters.

When Cristina asked her dad, Hugo, to buy her a punching bag back when she was in eighth or ninth grade, he happily obliged. Another family member, brother Hugo, took her down to Marson's gym some eight months ago so she could receive instruction and see what the sport was really like.

"At first, it was more than I expected. It was a lot of exercise, a lot of determination, muchas ganas," Lopez said, using the Spanish word for desire. "You gotta have a lot of ganas for this."

She has shown plenty, training five days a week for up to three hours a day.

She makes time for her workouts in between pursuing her degree in psychology - - Lopez would like to be a juvenile-hall counselor -- and helping out with the family restaurant.

The Lopezes fulfilled a long-held ambition last month by opening a Salvadoran restaurant named El Palmar in the upper Mission. It's now frequented by family friends, who recently have been inquiring about Cristina's upcoming debut. She expects a noisy group of supporters on Friday, with Dina leading the cheers.

"She asked me if I'm going to go see her and I said, 'Of course. I'll be in the front row,' " Dina said. "I'll either laugh or cry."

As with any other Golden Gloves tournament, there will be plenty of sweat and tears shed, as well as some blood. Marson said late entries swelled the number of participants to 110. Eleven of them are women, who first joined the proceedings about five years ago.

As former Golden Gloves champion Pat Lawlor chatted with other boxers at the gym on a recent evening, Marson pointed to some of his hopefuls for the tournament, including Leo Furey (201 pounds), Omar Barfield (178), Alexandre Maximou (147) and Jesus Lopez (132).

Cristina Lopez might not be the most talented of Marson's charges, but she might have come the furthest.

"Since I started here, I see women come and go, and then they don't come back," she said. "I don't know whether they find it too difficult or they're too distracted or what. Me, I just wanted to come in and work on my boxing." .